Currently, the leading dialer vendors' financial performance is deteriorating. This deterioration increases the risk of losing financial viability and support; limits the vendors' investment in new product features and functionality, thus requiring more customization; and requires ongoing risk assessment and contingency planning efforts by their customers. Current technology includes: proprietary predictive dialing hardware and software; standardized chip sets for supporting call progress detection for most dialing platforms; and software-driven pacing algorithms and list management for power and predictive dialing. Current dialer techniques for managing customers' diverse portfolios, i.e., by location, constrain flexibility and performance potential because collectors are limited to work on specific dialers, lists and strategies; dialer managers are required at every site to load, configure and refine daily inventory; and site infrastructure is capacitized for peak load, but only utilized for brief spikes.
In a particular example of the implementation of current systems, dialer vendors go through the generalized process of (1) inventorying the network data mover (“NDM”) of their customer(s), (2) sending the NDM files to local sites for processing according to local controls, (3) applying agent resources to the processed files and constantly tuning and adjusting according to site and dialer specific tools and (4) aggregating, transforming and delivering call disposition information to the customer(s) from the individual local sites. As is depicted in the “cons” of FIG. 1(a), these process steps are not efficient as an outbound dialing solution for customers having diverse portfolios with multiple locales. Optimizing telephone carrier charges is also possible by centralizing call generation in a few sites that represent the best rates, taxes and tariffs instead of being regulated at 10-20 sites with various carriers and fee structures.
Further to this particular example, referring to FIG. 1(b), according to the current system and process, a complex matrix of steps, locales, and service providers with proprietary software and hardware describes the call processing for a customer having a diverse calling portfolio. As shown in FIG. 1(b), different calls must be routed from/to different sites, i.e., site #1, site #2, site #3 from different carriers and data processing entities. Further still, within each site, there may be multiple configurations and dialers, thus contributing to the inefficiencies of the current system. This system requires complex maintenance, constrains sharing of work and “best practices” as between different sites and different dialers. For example, the current system and process limit the efficiency of a customer's outbound dialing to connect to callers who are targeted for collections, telemarketing, and the like based upon the fact that proprietary hardware and software is required at either a call center or site-by-site basis.
Depending on the particular call center and/or site, individual customers and/or call center staff can only connect to and through the designated proprietary hardware and software for that call center or site, thereby limiting the amount of work the staff can do and constraining the amount of work that can be shared across the customer's entire enterprise. As such, there is a need in the art for a centralized process for outbound calling and call data collection that removes such restraints. The number of collections treatments that can be used cost efficiently is expanding, and these cannot be done at all sites. Collections treatments include, but are not limited to: call with IVR-like prompts for identification and past due payment, call with IVR-like prompts for “screening” (e.g. to confirm the right party) then select automated or personal response, call progress detection determines live answer and immediately transfers to an agent (same as predictive dialer). Combining these treatments offered on a single, centralized platform enables higher rates of contact at the lowest cost required.